


i'm covered in the colors

by rocketshiptospace



Category: Eyewitness (US TV)
Genre: M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9186284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocketshiptospace/pseuds/rocketshiptospace
Summary: The first time Philip touches him Lukas doesn’t even notice the watercolour that now stains his body until much, much later. After the kiss at the cabin, after witness a triple homicide, after narrowly escaping death.Or, Soulmate AU in which you get watercolour marks wherever your soulmate touches you. Lukas has trouble accepting his.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is written for philkas week, day two: soulmate au.

The first time Philip touches him Lukas doesn’t even notice the watercolour that now stains his body until much, much later. After the kiss at the cabin, after witness a triple homicide, after narrowly escaping death.

At first he thinks they’re bruises. The spots are blue and black and swirl up his side, his arms, his chest his neck. They _look_ like bruises. But Lukas knows they aren’t, because when he touches them they don’t hurt. Quite the opposite, really. They feel like a hug, like home, like _love love love_ , and Lukas stands under the shower trying to rub himself clean until his skin is red and itchy and heaving in desperate breaths, and the marks are _still there._

He knows what it means. He knows, but he doesn’t want to believe it. The next day at school, he makes sure he wears a shirt that covers all of the marks.

It’s weird, how Lukas managed to forget all about Philip, while he’s essentially the centre of all this. But when he spots him in the hallways at school that morning, he freezes. The whole world stops spinning for a second and the only thing he can see is Philip, slowly walking towards him. Because while he’d tried to scrub his arms clean from any sign that his soulmate had ever touched him, he suddenly remembered he had touched Philip, too.

Maybe it just didn’t occur to him that he’d be his soulmate’s soulmate, too.

When Philip spots him, he smiles, softly, carefully, and now that they’re face to face, Lukas can clearly see the swirling red patterns of watercolour that grace the side of his neck, his cheek where Lukas had first pushed him away before they kissed. It doesn’t look pretty, in the way most people’s watercolours do. It looks like blood, like Lukas ripped him right open by touching him, ruined the beautiful piece of canvas that was Philip Shea.

He thinks about the marks on his own body, the black and blue bruises that make him feel like he’s trapped, like he’s broken, and he can’t help but think that if love looks like this, he’s not sure if he wants it.

Philip is right in front of him now, and he’s talking, and people are staring at them, and Lukas’s head is spinning, and before he knows it he’s swinging his fist forward and they’re on the ground, fighting for who can hurt the other more. Lukas is pretty sure they both loose, in the end.

When Philip shows up in his room, later that day, Lukas wants to cry. He wants to cry, because he for sure thought that fight in the hallway meant the end of them, that Philip understood that this is not what he wants, that they’re not meant to be, no matter what the universe is trying to tell them. He wants to cry, because Philip is here, and he kisses him, and Lukas feels like coming home.

“I can’t believe what’s happening,” Lukas says, and he’s not even sure himself what he’s referring to. Maybe it’s to the boy underneath him, open, pliant, with a skin that turns bright red wherever Lukas touches it. Maybe it’s to the murders, everything that happened in the cabin, everything Lukas is trying to forget but can’t. Maybe it’s to the fading marks on his chest, lit right back up when Philip places a hand on his hip, staining the skin black and blue.

Maybe it’s to the fact that he found his soulmate. And it’s a boy.

“Nobody wants me to be that guy,” he continues, desperately trying to cling to every piece of why this is never going to work.

“What if you are,” Philip says, voice cold, facial expression unreadable, and for a split second, Lukas remembers he’s not the only one who found his soulmate. He’s just the only one fighting it. And in that split second, he wants to give in. He wants to be that guy, wants to kiss Philip, hold his hand, never let him go. Who cares what the world thinks. This is his soulmate, this is the one he’s supposed to be with, this is fate.

But then he sees the fading red mark on Philip’s cheek, where Lukas had touched him for the very first time, and he reminds himself that that is not what love is supposed to look like. He can’t help himself, though. Can’t help himself from leaning over Philip, kissing him, trying to get him as close as possible.

When Philip runs off, telling him to make a decision, he doesn’t follow.

\--

The worst of it all is that they both know. They both _know_ they’re soulmates, but that doesn’t make it easier. If anything, that makes it harder. They don’t talk about it. They don’t mention it. Some days, Lukas starts to wonder if it’s even _real_. But then Philip kisses him, or smiles at him, or _touches_ him, and Lukas feels like he’s floating and falling all at the same time.

The first time Lukas thinks that maybe their marks aren’t so ugly after all, that maybe _they_ aren’t so ugly after all, is when his father tells him Philip is leaving. It grips at his throat, claws at his inside, the horrible but inevitable realization that he _can’t lose Philip_.

He hates himself for it even getting to this point, where he pushed and pulled at Philip so much that he finally snapped. Philip has every right, Lukas knows this. He has every right to leave, and never look back. But Lukas has to try. Has to try to redeem this, get him back, make sure he never loses him again.

He shows Helen the gun. Philip doesn’t look at him.

\--

When his arms wrap around Philip, after Helen has taken him to the station for an interrogation, he’s pretty sure he’s never going to let go. But he does, and they find a space to sit under the tree, and Philip asks him if his stomach hurts, and he laughs, because he doesn’t yet have the courage to say _it does it does it does_.

Philip is patient. Philip is soft, and caring, and he’s everything Lukas doesn’t deserve, but so badly needs. Philip makes him a playlists, full of love songs, and Lukas finally breaks it off with Rose and Lukas thinks maybe they can do this after all. Maybe there’s beauty in blood and bruises as well.

But then he gets shot and everything goes to shit.

Lukas doesn’t remember much of those days. He was unconscious, for some of it, yes, but after that its’s a whirlwind of fleeing, of hiding out in a motel, of _skin skin skin_ , of walking right in the killers trap, of being shoved in a trunk, of being _saved_. All he remembers, through all of it, is that Philip is there, painting his skin with black and blue, and he paints Philip’s red in return. It feels like an anchor. One he so desperately needs.

Philip loses his mother and Lukas holds him while he cries. Later, when Philip has mostly calmed down, Lukas asks about her. Philip tells him stories, rattles on and on until his eyes fall shut, and Lukas stays awake the entire night to make sure he’s save.

He talks to his dad. It’s awkward, but it’s a start. It’s a step in the right direction.

Philip and him try. This time without a murder breathing down  their necks, without feeling like they’re constantly on the run. It lifts a burden, but it doesn’t make it easy. Lukas still hesitates before taking Philip’s hand in his, is still way too aware of all the eyes on him when they walk the school hallways. But they try, and that’s enough.

A month after it all ended, Lukas takes Philip to a party in Red Hook, he kisses him, in the middle of the dance floor, and for the first time Lukas doesn’t think about everyone watching him. All he sees is Philip, right in front of him, smiling brighter than anything he’s ever seen. He kisses him again, because he can, and because he wants to, and it feels like flying.

When they fall into bed, later, Philip curls into him and traces patterns on Lukas’s naked chest, and for the first time, they don’t look like bruises. They look like constellations, a universe full of possibilities. Lukas touches Philip’s cheek, to pull him in for a kiss, and the mark he leaves looks like the fire that warms his heart whenever he’s around Philip.

“I’m glad you’re my soulmate,” he says, and he means every word.

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://violetevents.tumblr.com) :)))))


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